manda (Matlin) is a photographer recovering from a marriage shattered by the infidelity of her husband, who seems to have begun his first affair on the day of their wedding. She drifts through her days in an exhausted depression, unable to pursue her photography or move past the trauma of the breakup.
Then, one day, she experiences a dream about a Native American shaman, at the time of Columbus, who was disturbed by his own inability to perceive the visitor's ships even as they sat moored in plain sight. He was not wired to register sights so alien to his daily experience. Only by willing himself to accept a new perception was he able to make the vessels appear on the horizon.
A young boy (Bailey) with an odd knowledge of quantum physics challenges Amanda to a game of one-on-one basketball. The bizarre encounter leads to another with a spooky subway denizen (Shimerman) and, not long after that, to an assignment to photograph another wedding, where Amanda finds herself convinced that the groom is about to betray his bride in the same way Amanda's husband betrayed her. Is any of this real, or is it just going on in Amanda's head?
This turning point in Amanda's life illustrates a series of interviews with physicists, medical doctors and academics, whose musings on the mysteries of quantum physics, reality and their impact on human emotion are themselves interposed with CGI images ranging from nerve impulses as they race through the human brain to an attack of comical little creatures intended to represent the peptides impacting Amanda's emotional state. The learned commentators break in regularly to say things like "Asking a human being to explain God is like asking a fish to explain the water in which it swims."
Quantum Mechanics in the City
What the #$*! Do We Know!? is well-meaning, but it exists on three separate tracks, which fail to build any collective momentum; instead, they distract from each other and irritate by switching back and forth whenever any one of them seems about to become too interesting.
The documentary track provides a rich banquet for thought, even for those who differ from the spiritual conclusions. Unfortunately, the early parts of the film present the various scholars in the briefest of all possible sound bites, allowing them a sentence or two before we're whisked away to ride a CGI light show or revisit Amanda's not-very-interesting personal problems. (A friend viewing the screener coined the phrase "philosophy Mad Libs.") The experts are given more time to talk, eventually, but as they're not identified until the film's almost over, little they say is given the full weight of expertise.
The CGI track is dazzling, but it connects with the ideas only fitfully and all too often seems like a flashlight being shined in our faces to see if we're awake. At times it's downright ludicrous. The scene of little pink Romantic peptides, under assault by a wave of sinister Depression peptides, is one low point, and the little CGI creatures providing encouragement, and discouragement, to a wedding guest attracted to Amanda aren't all that much more informative than the cartoon angel and devil whispering in the ears of a thousand other animated-cartoon Lotharios.
As for the dramatic track: Amanda's a cipher who spends so much of the film looking vaguely nauseated that her backstory, once provided, seems too little too late. Any emotional heft to her crisis is totally diluted by the interruptions of the other two tracks. Matlin's hearing impairment is incorporated in Amanda, but it leads to some odd moments, such as a scene that cuts back and forth between a drum performance and Amanda wrinkling her brow in seeming annoyance at the sound. Later, we hear her answering machine record a voice message in the next room.
The elements fail to mesh. They distract from one another. It's hard not to wish that the moviemakers had stuck with one all the way through.
Marlee Matlin, an Academy Award winner for Children of a Lesser God and more recently a recurring cast member on The West Wing, is an attractive and appealing actress whose charisma fails her for much of the film, as she's required to walk around with an expression that suggests chafing. She lights up the screen, briefly but memorably, when Amanda starts having a good time at the wedding, again when she recovers from a bout of self-loathing and again when she faces the dawn at the end. But these are brief highlights. For the most part, the film gives her little to work with.
